Perhaps a year before we returned to London, a Catholic friend brought me
to a spiritualistic seance at the house of a young man who had been lately
arrested under a suspicion of Fenianism, but had been released for lack
of evidence. He and his friends had been sitting weekly about a table in
the hope of spiritual manifestation and one had developed mediumship. A
drawer full of books had leaped out of the table when no one was touching
it, a picture had moved upon the wall. There were some half dozen of us,
and our host began by making passes until the medium fell asleep sitting
upright in his chair. Then the lights were turned out, and we sat waiting
in the dim light of a fire. Presently my shoulders began to twitch and my
hands. I could easily have stopped them, but I had never heard of such a
thing and I was curious. After a few minutes the movement became violent
and I stopped it. I sat motionless for a while and then my whole body
moved like a suddenly unrolled watch-spring, and I was thrown backward on
the wall. I again stilled the movement and sat at the table. Everybody
began to say I was a medium, and that if I would not resist some wonderful
thing would happen. I remembered that my father had told me that Balzac
had once desired to take opium for the experience sake, but would not
because he dreaded the surrender of his will. We were now holding each
other's hands and presently my right hand banged the knuckles of the woman
next to me upon the table. She laughed, and the medium, speaking for the
first time, and with difficulty, out of his mesmeric sleep, said, "tell
her there is great danger." He stood up and began walking round me, making
movements with his hands as though he were pushing something away. I was
now struggling vainly with this force which compelled me to movements I
had not willed, and my movements had become so violent that the table was
broken. I tried to pray, and because I could not remember a prayer,
repeated in a loud voice
Of Man's first disobedience and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world and all our woe...
Sing, heavenly muse.
My Catholic friend had left the table and was saying a Pater Noster and
Ave Maria in the corner. Presently all became still and so dark that I
could not see anybody. I described it to somebody next day as like going
out of a noisy political meeting on to a quiet country road. I said to
myself, "I am now in a trance but I no longer have any desire to resist."
But when I turned my eyes to the fireplace I could see a faint gleam of
light, so I thought "no, I am not in a trance." Then I saw shapes faintly
appearing in the darkness & thought, "they are spirits;" but they were
only the spiritualists and my friend at her prayers. The medium said in a
faint voice, "we are through the bad spirits." I said, "will they ever
come again, do you think?" and he said, "no, never again, I think," and in
my boyish vanity I thought it was I who had banished them. For years
afterwards I would not go to a seance or turn a table and would often ask
myself what was that violent impulse that had run through my nerves? was
it a part of myself--something always to be a danger perhaps; or had it
come from without, as it seemed?